


bird gone mad

by freefallvertigo



Category: Atypical
Genre: F/F, First Kiss, if u catch my drift, my babies are so into each other and they just don’t know how to say it, so they DONT say it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-02
Updated: 2018-10-02
Packaged: 2019-07-23 22:37:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16168256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freefallvertigo/pseuds/freefallvertigo
Summary: izzie gets tired of casey avoiding her and decides to do something about it





	bird gone mad

Casey hadn’t been to school for two days. 

Casey hadn’t been to school for two days and Izzie was worried about her. 

It had been almost a week since Casey had told Izzie, in no uncertain terms, that she was in love with Evan. That she’d had sex with him for the second time and it felt so right and even though they had sat in her parked car holding hands for what felt like a lifetime, Izzie didn’t stand a chance with Casey. Neither of them had admitted out loud that that’s what’s Casey’s point had been all along, but Izzie had felt the white hot sting of the implications nonetheless. She still could. When Casey had finally reclaimed her hand, Izzie’s heart sunk and it hadn’t resurfaced since. 

To begin with, things had returned to relative normalcy between the two of them upon their return to school. Izzie was good at making out like things that were happening weren’t really happening, case in point: her stressful home life, the Nate situation, and now her feelings for Casey. So she had pretended that she didn’t still think about holding Casey’s hand and she pretended that every time she saw her, her mind didn’t go blank and her body didn’t flood with a familiar and lovely kind of warmth, and she pretended, too, that Casey hadn’t been about to kiss her that one time on her Birthday. That last one was more for Casey’s sake. 

Frankly, it was all for Casey’s sake.

And it had worked. For a while. However, by the middle of the week, Casey had stopped being able to meet Izzie’s eyes when they spoke and any small touch they shared made her flinch. Whenever they made plans to study or hang out together, Casey would conveniently have some other thing she had to take care of, usually pertaining to Sam or Evan. On Thursday, Casey never showed up to school. Izzie called her and texted her throughout the day, but she never heard back. 

Friday was more of the same. Casey never even showed up to track, which was especially unlike her. In Izzie’s mind, there were three possible ways to explain away Casey’s erratic behaviour:

1\. She was dead.

2\. She had a family (Sam) emergency.

3\. Izzie had scared Casey away. 

The first reason seemed pretty far fetched, and usually if Casey was having trouble at home, she’d reach out to Izzie about it. Which left three. Izzie started to panic that she hadn’t been quite as subtle about her feelings for Casey as she had believed; that Casey had seen right through her and she was disgusted by her and so she did what she did best - she ran. The idea made Izzie nauseous. 

So, after painfully enduring another day at Clayton without Casey, and failing once more to get through to her over the phone, Izzie decided to pay her a visit. She stopped at her house first. Or she was planning to, until she spotted Casey on the way, running her usual route, laser-focused and red-cheeked and positively adorable. She was on the other side of the street, looking nowhere except straight ahead. 

“Newton!” Izzie shouted. 

Casey slowed to a stop but didn’t turn around. 

“Newton, over here!” Izzie cupped her hands around her mouth and then waved, but Casey still hadn’t turned around to face her friend. For a moment they both just stood on their respective sides of the street in something of a suburban standoff. “What, you won’t even look at me now?”

Casey turned around. The air was brisk but the sun still shone, and at present it shone directly into her eyes. She squinted and held a hand over her brow to shield her line of vision. “Izzie. What are you doing here?”

”Good to see you, too,” Izzie quipped, crossing the street when it became apparent that Casey wasn’t going to. The tension between them didn’t sit right with Izzie, it felt off. “You haven’t been in school for two days. I haven’t heard a peep out of you. What’s going on? Are you okay?”

”I’m fine,” Casey shrugged. “You didn’t have to come all the way down here.”

”Apparently I did. I can’t get hold of you any other way; even Evan hasn’t returned any of my calls,” Izzie quirked her eyebrows as if prompting Casey to offer some explanation for her absence.

”Oh, yeah, he probably won’t,” Casey shifted her gaze, allowing it to settle on some spot in the distance. “We broke up.”

” _What_?”

”Don’t make a thing out of it, all right? I just wanted to be alone for a while.”

Izzie couldn’t help but feel hurt. Something huge had just happened in Casey’s life and she hadn’t even wanted to come to Izzie about it. Casey was probably feeling so many things - she probably felt alone and confused and heartbroken - but apparently she’d rather feel like that than confide in Izzie. Was this her fault? Had she made things weird?

”I’m so sorry, Casey,” And she was. She was sorry for a lot of things.

”Don’t be,” Casey’s smile was feeble. “I broke up with him. I guess it just wasn’t as right as I thought it was.”

 _She broke up with him_. What did that mean? Did it mean anything, or was it purely coincidental that her relationship with Evan broke down following the strengthening of their own relationship? Izzie couldn’t be sure. Casey was so hard to read because she was so good at compartmentalising, just like herself. 

“Anyway,” Casey tucked her hair behind her ear. “I gotta run. It was good seeing you.”

”Well hey, wait a second,” Izzie insitinctively reached out and put her hand on the crook of Casey’s arm to keep her from taking off. Casey tensed but Izzie pretended, again, that it didn’t mean anything. “We should talk. Do you want to hang out later? We could get a slice or something.”

”I don’t know, I’ve got a lot of work to catch up on,” Casey was already backing up. Izzie’s hand fell back to her side. “I’ll see you at school though, okay?”

Before Izzie could reply, Casey had taken off running in the opposite direction. Izzie didn’t look away until Casey had diseappeared behind the curve of the road, and when she finally did walk away, she did so with a pit in her stomach and a newfound fear that things between them might never be the same again. 

 

///

 

It was Monday. 

Casey felt awful.

All morning, whenever she had seen Izzie in class or in the hallways, she’d ducked her eyes or turned away or done anything she could not to have to acknowledge her existence. This was so unlike her, and the worst part was that she didn’t even have a solid reason for icing Izzie out like this. She hadn’t done anything wrong, and yet Casey became filled with a feeling she could only describe as dread whenever their eyes met. 

Seeing her on Friday had been especially hard. Izzie had come all that way to check on her, but something about being in her immediate proximity was killing Casey. Even though she couldn’t put her finger on why, she had a sneaking suspicion that the way she felt around Izzie was not completely unrelated to her reasons for ending things with Evan. The spark she once felt around him had died and seemed to have found a home elsewhere. Of course this upset Casey deeply; she had loved Evan. She was sure of it.

And yet, just as quickly as she had fallen in love, she had apparently fallen out of it. 

It was frustrating and upsetting and being around Izzie, she was certain, was only bound to confuse matters more. Except Izzie evidently didn’t share the same sentiment. The final bell rang and Casey was making her way down the busy hallway toward the much awaited exit when a hand emerged from out of nowhere, took her roughly by the arm, and yanked her to the side. 

Casey stumbled into an empty classroom and heard the door slam behind her. She spun on her heels. Izzie. Of course.

Then, right on time, there was that feeling she struggle to name.

”What the hell are you doing?” Casey asked, forcing a good-natured laugh when in reality her heart was being a thousand times a minute like a bird gone mad, flinging itself against the bars of its cage. 

Izzie didn’t laugh. In fact, she looked pissed, her dark eyes somehow darker than usual and her mouth in a taut, straight line. The faux smile dropped from Casey’s face. She knew then that Izzie was going to have that talk she wanted whether Casey was willing or not. And in this instance, she was definitely not. But Izzie had cornered her and was presently blocking the only exit. Brilliant.

”You better start explaining yourself, Newton,” Izzie folded her arms across her chest.

In an effort to alleviate the serious mood, Casey made a joke, “You’d make a very cute bouncer,” which she instantly regretted. Izzie’s stern features faltered and Casey internally cursed herself out. “Sorry. What am I explaining?”

”You can start with why the hell you’ve been avoiding me. And don’t say you haven’t,” Izzie quickly added just as Casey opened her mouth to do exactly that. “Because I saw you do a 180 in the hallway before and practically sprint away from me. You are not as subtle as you think you are.”

”Oh, that,” Casey waved a dismissive hand. “I just forgot my... hair brush.”

“Your hair brush? You’d just left third period. Why would you leave your hair brush in biology?” Izzie scrutinised, eyes narrow with doubt. 

“Funny story actually,” Casey pressed on, trying not to pay too much mind to the fact that Izzie knew exactly where she was for third period. She didn’t want to let herself feel too much about that. “I was using my hair sample for some genetics exper-“

”Would you quit bullshitting me? Just for a second,” Izzie pleaded. She sounded tired. Casey’s shoulders slumped. “I spoke to Evan last night. He finally returned my calls. Funny, how he can manage it but my best friend - my favourte person - can’t.”

Casey stilled and her eyes widened. When she had broken up with Evan she had said some things to him regarding her reasons for ending things that she would rather weren’t repeated. Especially not to Izzie. She might take them the wrong way. Or the right way. She tried to feign casual interest. “Oh. What did you guys... what did he say?”

”He said you mentioned my name. When you broke up with him,” Izzie said. “He wouldn’t say much more than that but he seemed to think that I had something to do with it all. Which is absurd. Right?”

Casey cleared her throat and looked down at her feet. Izzie was probing for something; for a confession or a revelation or something, and it was on the tip of Casey’s tongue but she just didn’t want to spit it out. “Right. I think he probably just got his wires crossed. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

Izzie looked disappointed. Disheartened. “Okay, Casey,” The use of Casey’s real name felt like a slap to the face for both girls. “I’m going to leave now, but the second I walk out of that door, I’m never going to bring this up again. Do you understand? If you have something to say to me, now is your only chance.”

”I don’t know what you mean,” Casey mumbled. 

Izzie scoffed. “Goodbye, Casey.”

Izzie’s fingertips grazed the handle. Casey felt a wave of panic roll over her. “Wait!” She grabbed Izzie’s hand. Squeezed it. Held onto it. “I don’t know how to say what you want me to say.”

Izzie looked down at their interlocked fingers and Casey somehow knew that they were both thinking of that time outside the 7/11, in their car, with cotton candy Slurpees and a declined call which meant more than Casey had cared to admit at the time. Reclaiming her hand that time had felt like the hardest thing she’d ever had to do, as if their skin had been super glued together and it had physically pained her to pull apart. Now, she never wanted to let go.

”Try,” Izzie whispered. 

Casey looked at Izzie. Right now, she was so beautiful and so vulnerable and Casey found that she was able to pinpoint all of the million things she adored about her: the softness in her eyes that, to anybody else, would have been mistaken for hardness, the hopeful half smile that told Casey she was safe to be herself, the perfect arch of her brow, her warm hands, the blush in her cheeks,  how she smelled sweet in a way that made the butterflies in Casey’s stomach do a hundred tiny backflips. 

But how could Casey say any of that? Out loud? To her face? 

“Tell me what you told Evan,” Izzie went on, offering an appreciated helping hand to a seemingly speechless Casey. “What did you say about me?”

Casey swallowed, working up the nerve to speak. “I told him... I told him what almost happened on my Birthday.”

”What almost happened?” Izzie wasn’t going to make this easy on Casey.

”You know.”

”I want you to say it.”

Casey sighed and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, Izzie had moved in a little closer to her. Casey, intimidated, took a slow step back. Still, she held on to Izzie’s hand. “We forehead promised never to leave each other.”

”And?” Izzie took another step.

Casey stepped back again, felt her legs press up against the desk. “And... I closed my eyes. There was a moment where I was going to-“

”To what?” Izzie whispered, so close to Casey now that their bodies were practically pressed up against one another. Izzie pressed her forehead against Casey’s, just like she had that day. Casey’s eyes flickered between Izzie’s intoxicating gaze and her lips, which were just as engaging. Just as tempting.

Oh, how Casey wanted to “Kiss you.”

Casey couldn’t hold herself back anymore. She crashed her mouth, somewhat clumsily, into Izzie’s, which was waiting and ready for her. Izzie’s lips caught Casey’s and it wasn’t long before they found their rhythm. And then they got lost in each other. Izzie hoisted Casey up onto the desk and Casey wrapped her legs around Izzie’s waist. There was an energy exchanged between the girls which Casey could only describe as electrifying, potent, drug-like. Izzie pulled Casey in. Casey gasped into Izzie’s mouth. Izzie smiled. 

Casey couldn’t believe her own senses - she was kissing Izzie. This was really happening. 

Only, that kiss didn’t just feel like a kiss. It felt like so many things. A sigh of relief. A confession. A desperate plea. Clarity. They clung onto each other’s clothes and hair and bodies, as if repelling any force that might act to separate them. 

And when they finally did pull apart, after a heady and bruising kiss, they did so with breathless, content smiles on their faces, because that kiss had also been something else:

a promise to never leave each other. 


End file.
